Author: Tony Kevin

There was a massive loss of confidence in Labor's policies. The Australian electorate saw through the triviality of what both major parties were offering. Gillard would deserve her party's full support in leading a Labor Government in a hung parliament. This may be the making of her as a great prime minister.

The former head of the Khmer Rouge's main interrogation centre has just been sentenced to 30 years prison. There are important lessons internationally. If a state becomes evil, its orders must be resisted.

Julia Gillard has invited people to say what they feel on the issue of how Australia should manage its borders. It's worth recalling what happened when
an Australian Government last instructed its defence force
to vigorously repel asylum-seeker boats.

We have just experienced a Shakespearean moment. There is real excitement in the land, a sense of new beginnings, as the Elizabethan figure of Julia Gillard takes the reins as Prime Minister. Rudd, to his credit, has accepted the inevitable with grace and dignity.

The new Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, Christiana Figueres is well qualified
to help heal the wounds of Copenhagen. If the West can learn the lessons of those failed talks and move forward with modesty, flexibility and sensitivity, we may hope for progress.

The Black Saturday Royal Commission seems to be ignoring scientific evidence that climate
change was a major causal factor. The possibility that Victoria's cool mountain ridges
and valleys are drying out and that such ferocious fires are the way of the future might be a truth
too much to bear.

The Howard years made me feel ashamed to be Australian, and I felt about his electoral defeat the way East Germans felt about the Berlin Wall coming down: as a kind of cleansing. Rudd disappoints for a different reason.

Rudd is technically correct that the opposition parties stymied his CPRS bills, but the buck stops with his disappointing climate policy leadership. Upon the failure of Australian parliamentary politics, we need now to find the courage to support mass non-violent
public action modelled on Vietnam War protest.

The Devil himself could not have better orchestrated Sunday's air tragedy at Smolensk Airport. It was to be a symbolic moment of reconciliation between two neighbouring countries that have been separated by war.

In Australia's next federal election, I'll vote One, Zero, Zero — Greens 1, Labor 0, Coalition 0. This is the only way I can fulfil my voter duty, while recording protest at the failure of our major parties to offer real policies on the planet's climate crisis.

It is disingenuous for Labor education ministers' to say MySchool will create political pressure to boost 'under-performing' schools. Meanwhile parents, voting with their feet, may foster the very outcomes they fear: underprivileged, low-morale schools breeding a
generation of alienated, under-achieving kids.

At conferences like this, an atmosphere of crisis is necessary for final deals to be achieved. Kevin Rudd will not want to define the summit as a failure so, hopefully, his notorious 5 per cent emissions reduction target will be left behind.